U.S. criticized for leaving WHO
CRITICISM OF U.S. PULLOUT COMES FROM ALLIES, CHINA
Top U.S. allies on Wednesday denounced the planned pullout of the United States from the World Health Organization, with the
Italian health minister calling it “wrong” and a political ally of Germany’s chancellor warning that the withdrawal could make more room on the world stage for China.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, meanwhile, ratcheted up the Trump administration’s months of criticism of the UN health agency. The U.S., which is facing criticism for its own handling of the coronavirus, leads the world in confirmed cases and deaths, a situation that President Donald Trump has sought to blame on China.
In his comments, Pompeo repeated the WHO’s alleged failures in responding to the virus’s emergence in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December and accused the agency of having “a long history of corruption and politicization” in dealing with other diseases.
The new broadsides appeared aimed at refocusing attention during a presidential election year on the shortcomings of WHO and China early in the pandemic that has since reached nearly 11.9 million confirmed cases and a death toll approaching 545,800.
“There is a real focus on the failures that took place around Wuhan and the World Health Organization’s fundamental inability to perform its basic core mission of preventing a global pandemic spread,” Pompeo said.
The United Nations and the U.S. State Department announced Tuesday that Washington had submitted formal notification that the U.S. would withdraw from the WHO within a year. The notice made good on President Donald Trump’s vow in
May to terminate U.S. participation in the WHO over its alleged missteps and kowtowing to China.
Trump’s presumptive opponent in November’s election, former Vice-President Joe Biden, has vowed to rescind the decision on his first day in office, if he is elected.
Underscoring the unprecedented nature of the planned U.S. exit, the WHO doesn’t have language in its constitution about how a country could leave: The administration is mostly bound by U.S. legislation that requires a one-year notice and payment of any arrears in full before departure.
“We’ll get it right, but as the president has made very clear, we are not going to underwrite an organization that has historically been incompetent and not performed its fundamental function,”
Pompeo said.
Questions were rife about how quickly the U.S. might start backing away from an organization it helped build over decades with both funding and expertise on global health issues as diverse as the fight against polio and smallpox to tobacco use, obesity and sugar consumption.